Why It’s a Good Idea to get a Ph.D in Particle Physics

Eons ago I talked about writing some arguments for or against getting a doctorate in particle physics. Many months later I actually wrote why it’d be a bad idea. I now attempt to argue the opposite.

It might be fun to review that previous post if you’re reading this one for the first time.

A good place to start seems to be to rebuttal some of the arguments made by the first post.

Why narrow your study in any particular field at all?

As I go through life, I am becoming more convinced that we should all have a particular field that we are adept at. When many individuals have unique skills, as a collective whole we can create an industrious and progressive society by tapping into each individual’s particular set of skills.

The fact that there are so many problems to be solved in academia should not discourage people from entering it. The “endless problems” may actually be a good thing. If all the problems were solved, boredom would set in. (A world of boredom would probably be saved for another post).

A strong conflict is that if there are endless problems, how does one ever hope to solve “the big picture?” For instance, if I’m trying to solve the “Theory of Everything,” I can be more or less certain that this problem won’t be solved in my lifetime – I should have spent it doing something else (assuming that there’s only one chance at life).

The reward is in struggling to solve the problem. There might be a rush of excitement once it’s solved, but the real adventure lies in the journey, as the cliché of clichés would suggest.

It would also be a good idea to get a Physics PhD if your purpose in life is to chase after truth. This is very much like a religious experience. I feel like chasing after truth is like searching for God when all the religions of the world haven’t offered a satisfying explanation. What I mean by truth is the origin of the universe, where the universe is defined as the biggest thing out there. Where did we come from? How did we get here?

This will be a knock on religious believers, but to answer this question requires one to go beyond the easy acceptance of the belief in God. It requires one to struggle to understand the laws of nature and how everything works, so that one day one might actually be able to contribute to this body of knowledge.

I will refrain from explaining why it’s good for practical purposes to get a PhD in physics. Most of the time, people do physics for the truth aspect rather than for the “make cool lasers” aspect.

So even though I might love film, music, literature, traveling, socializing, etc… (the list goes on and on) and I could equally devote my life to those areas, it would never be as satisfying as understanding how nature works.

With that said, there is little room to add an argument for why it’s not going to make me extremely financially successful. But let’s cover it anyways: the argument is that the skills you pick up will help you analyze similar tough problems, and allow you to acquire a challenging and rewarding job that may actually pay well, even if you won’t directly use any of the physics knowledge you gained while pumping out your thesis.

But getting rich is not important. It is enough to make enough money to live healthfully, and, once in awhile, catch a musical or two. Sure, the financial situation in HEP is bad right now, but a truth-seeker seeks truth with or without favorable financial circumstances.

In the last post I mentioned that instead of getting a PhD, I could travel the world and speak several languages and learn different cultures. In fact, I was cheating. Being a particle physicist (among other types of physicist) allows you to do just that. Not many disciplines have you working back to back with physicists from around the world. Particle accelerators (CERN) are usually international collaborations, so you will be able to interact with all different types of people and travel to any place in the world – whatever happens to be the location for either a conference or the particle accelerator. Not bad.

Last time I mentioned that HEP is a rather cold subject. It can very well be. But when taking a step back and looking at the subject as a whole, it attempts to explain the most fundamental building blocks of our universe and offers a glimpse at what the universe looks like just a tiny insy weensy of a fraction after the Big Bang. And in fact, HEP is only a cold subject when you’re doing things not exactly directly related to it (debugging code). The physics of it is actually extremely interesting! There are certain rules that allow certain reactions, nature only allows certain combinations of things, certain laws seem to hold without flaw, etc…

How useful is this for humanity? This question is difficult to answer. It comes up when a government considers funding for the research. The true answer lies in one of the famous defenses of a particle physicist when asked how it will help to defend our country. (I forgot the name, but it’s easily looked up in a book I have).

I’m paraphrasing here:

“Sir, I don’t know how it will help to protect our nation or increase our military might. I’m not sure if it will help in defending our country. However, it will make our country worth defending.”

Unfortunately for the particle physicists, this argument is becoming increasingly unconvincing to the government. Although, it did work at the time the statement was given!

The last argument deals with getting a job in academia. The quick answer is, yes – it is hard, and many people eventually “fail” in getting a tenure professor position. However, there’s no telling what will happen several years down the line, and it makes sense – if you’re a truth seeker, to do whatever you can to stay in the game until you can no longer play it.

The answer to the question about the origin of the universe lies between cosmology and particle physics. The reason I chose particle physics is because the field is more defined and results seem more tangible. It helps that the next generation collider will be turning on very soon. Trips to Europe aren’t so bad either. The two fields should complement each other, though, and not one field is considered to be more advantageous in answering the question.

So, fellow seeker of the deepest truth of them all, if you really care about where we came from, a PhD in particle physics is an EXTREMELY good idea.

If you can’t already tell, I think it’s a GOOD idea to get a Phd in particle physics. But if everyone did this, perhaps no one would be able to. We need people serving the rest of the society. Luckily, we have these people so I’m going to be selfish and try and chase after the secrets of mother nature.

And also, to point out that I’m not just about truth-seeking, I think having sex is wonderful too.

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